The Brooklyn School Suing the C.D.C.

Coney Island Prep’s lawsuit alleges that the government’s incompetence in dealing with COVID is not just destructive—leaving people dead and making it hard for many others to do their jobs—but also illegal.

Many Americans seem to have abandoned hope of a functioning government. The country is cresting its third Covid-19 peak; it hasn’t flattened any curves so much as stacked them into one ascending, surrealist staircase. The lame-duck President ditched the G-20’s pandemic-preparedness summit for a round of golf. Congress is hopeless. Elections are deemed fraudulent. Perhaps only one great national tradition remains viable: Americans can always sue.

A few weeks ago, Coney Island Prep, a charter school in Brooklyn, filed a lawsuit against Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, for their handling of the pandemic. The school and a few co-plaintiffs allege that the government’s incompetence is not just destructive—leaving people dead and making it hard for many others to do their jobs—but also illegal. “People are dying, and it’s our kids’ parents, our kids’ grandparents,” Leslie-Bernard Joseph, the C.E.O. of Coney Island Prep, said recently. Most of the school’s thousand students are Black or Latino. Many are poor. When the pandemic hit, the school decided not to expect much help, and formed its own safety net. It distributed about eight hundred laptops and tablets, a hundred and twenty-five thousand meals, and more than a hundred thousand dollars to parents, to cover rent and other expenses. It’s also paying for fifty families’ Internet.

“That should be the government’s job, but that’s actually not what I need help with right now,” Joseph said. He wanted readily available tests, and reliable information, so that the school doesn’t have to keep ripping up its plans. In October, four days before the school was to open, the governor declared the neighborhood a “hot spot.” The school was shut down. “It’s been like trying to swim against the current of the Pacific Ocean,” Joseph said. “We knew we were drowning, and we were just going to try to keep swimming as long as we could.”

At issue in the lawsuit is the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act, which President Trump signed into law last year. The act sets requirements for the executive branch, including running a federal testing-and-tracing program, releasing timely information about outbreaks, and soliciting input from the public. If the school prevails, it will not win monetary damages, but the United States District Court would compel the government to do its job.

Does a school’s taking on the C.D.C. represent democracy in action? The other day, a handful of Coney Island Prep history students convened on Zoom to discuss. A girl named Karema, who wore a sage-colored hijab, spoke up. “Coming from someone who is taking A.P. U.S. history this year and just came out of global history, you learn a lot about the Renaissance and all these ideas of the social contract,” she said. “And what happens when the government isn’t doing their job? Revolution happens! Someone goes and starts beheading the entire royal family. The French Revolution all over again.”

Heads nodded. A girl named Ana, who had a blue streak in her hair, pointed out that the government wasn’t representing the will of the people. Civilians weren’t doing so great, either. “So Halloween happens,” she said. “We all know those who were posting on Snapchat, ‘Hey, I was going to a party!’ And now the holidays are coming up, and a lot of people have been saying, ‘You’re not going to stop me from seeing my grandma!’ Well, guess what? Grandma’s not gonna be there if you’re gonna go see her!”An assistant principal jumped in with a question about American exceptionalism. A boy named Collins said, “When you talk about power in America and American exceptionalism, I think of the police.” His classmates agreed. The power structure, Ana added, was represented by the maskless officers she passed every day.

The conversation turned. Students considered protest versus social distancing. They discussed the Enlightenment. The faithful execution of laws was weighed. These were not theoretical ideas. The longer the virus raged, the more the students suffered. Ana’s father had lost his construction job because of the pandemic. A girl named Jahdiel said that the virus had marooned her with cousins in New Jersey. In the spring, a student’s father died of COVID. When a mother of four students died, the family fell behind on rent.

One student, Margarita, chimed in periodically; behind her, young kids were playing. “This is a very small apartment, and there’s eleven people living here with six children, and everybody has to be in school,” she said. “I’m responsible for my brother and my sister. And it’s difficult for me to pay attention to my classes. Sometimes I get really emotional—it’s just so overwhelming.” Her dad worked long hours. She cooked him dinner when he returned late at night. “I wish the government would be doing something. Like, I just wish they would be more focussed on helping people.” ♦